Trenton orchestra, unable to work in concert with musicians, to stop performing under own name

TRENTON — The 89-year-old Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra will no longer perform under its own name as its leadership seeks to escape a series of disputes and alleged harassment over labor and union issues.

The orchestra’s parent organization, the Greater Trenton Symphony Association, will still present performances at the War Memorial, including its popular New Year’s Eve concert next month. But the musicians will perform as part of other groups, such as La Boheme Opera, which will perform at the Dec. 31 show.

The GTSA decided to permanently stop using its own orchestra after having been “the object of a continuous series of anonymous complaints, harassments and intimidation tactics” for the past six years, board secretary Robert Moran wrote in a letter last month. He said the complaints have “wasted thousands of dollars of the organization’s financial resources” and driven away major donors.

“The members of the Symphony Association board feel strongly that they no longer can continue to do business under these circumstances,” he wrote.

Under the new arrangement, the GTSA will no longer be responsible for hiring and paying musicians, or dealing with their contractual issues. A representative for the musicians, Steve Kyle, said their last contract expired four years ago.

“They don’t want to have to use the symphony because we’re still trying to get a contract with them,” he argued. “We’ve been trying to negotiate a new agreement since the end of the season in 2006, and we’ve basically been stonewalled.”

Kyle, a double bass player in the orchestra and chairman of the orchestra committee, said the musicians would like to save the ensemble, which is the state’s oldest professional symphony. But he said he’s not sure what they can do.

“We’ve invested a lot of time in this symphony,” he said. “Many members have been there 20 years or more. It becomes part of you and it’s sad to see it stop — especially when there are funds to present La Boheme Opera on New Year’s Eve.”

John Peter Holly, the GTSA’s executive director and the orchestra’s conductor, said he and the board have endured a series of attacks and deceptions tied to labor issues. He cited, among other events, an alleged attempt by some musicians to seize the organization’s grant funding. But the central issue was an anonymous complaint filed with the state Department of Labor about six years ago.

The Department of Labor did not respond to a request for information yesterday, but Kyle and Holly said the complaint had to do with the question of whether the orchestra musicians are regular employees or individual contractors. It argued they were employees, and the GTSA was thus in violation of labor law for not making contributions for unemployment and disability insurance and other obligations.

Kyle said the state found that the GTSA owed tens of thousands of dollars in fees and interest. Holly said the GTSA made a “small payment,” but that Department of Labor officials then realized they had received incorrect information and that the musicians, who typically play three to four symphony concerts a year, were actually contractors.

Holly said the complaint remains open but maintained that the GTSA does not owe the state any further payments.

He did not directly address the contract renewal, but said he believed the previous contract, signed in 2003, gave too many concessions to the musicians. Kyle said the major change in that contract was the creation of a review board with oversight over musician dismissals, but he said the board has never been activated.

Both men noted that musicians in the small orchestra earn very little. Holly said they will earn $275 each for playing in a Celtic Tenors concert this Saturday. Kyle said the unemployment contributions on such small payments would be minimal, though the GTSA could owe a sizeable amount if years of overdue fees and accumulated interest are included.

They also said that many symphony musicians already play for La Boheme, and that the opera company’s ensemble would be enlarged for the New Year’s Eve performance by hiring more symphony players. Kyle said that so far he has not been one of the musicians asked to play on Dec. 31.